Data and Computer
Communications
Chapter 7 – Data Link Control
Protocols
Eighth Edition
by William Stallings
Lecture slides by Lawrie Brown
Data Link Control Protocols
"Great and enlightened one," said Ten-teh,
as soon as his stupor was lifted, "has this
person delivered his message competently, for
his mind was still a seared vision of snow and
sand and perchance his tongue has stumbled?"
"Bend your ears to the wall," replied the
Emperor, "and be assured."
—Kai Lung's Golden Hours, Earnest Bramah
Data Link Control Protocols
 need
layer of logic above Physical
 to manage exchange of data over a link






frame synchronization
flow control
error control
addressing
control and data
link management
Flow Control
 ensure
sending entity does not overwhelm
receiving entity

by preventing buffer overflow
 influenced

by:
transmission time
• time taken to emit all bits into medium

propagation time
• time for a bit to traverse the link
 assume
here no errors but varying delays
Model of Frame Transmission
Stop and Wait
 source
transmits frame (no need for seq. #)
 destination receives frame and replies with
acknowledgement (ACK)
 source waits for ACK before sending next
 destination can stop flow by not send ACK
 works well for a few large frames
 Stop and wait becomes inadequate if large
block of data is split into small frames
Stop and Wait Link Utilization
Stop and Wait Utilization (cont)


B = R x (d/V)

B: length of the link in bits

R: data rate of the link, in bps

d: length or distance of the link in meters

D: velocity of propagation, in m/s
a = B/L

a: the propagation delay (with frame tx time = 1)

L: the number of bits in the frame
d
 or a  ( )
V
L
( )
R
Sliding Windows Flow Control





allows multiple numbered frames to be in transit
receiver has buffer W long
transmitter sends up to W frames without ACK
ACK includes number of next frame expected
sequence number is bounded by size of field (k)



frames are numbered modulo 2k
giving max window size of up to 2k – 1 (why?)
receiver can ack frames without permitting
further transmission (Receive Not Ready)
 must send a normal acknowledge to resume
 if have full-duplex link, can piggyback ACKs
Sliding Window Diagram
3-bit seq. #, Win size = 7
Sliding Window Example
Sliding Window Utilization

Window size W, transmission time = 1,
propagation time = a

Case 1: W >= 2a + 1


Sender A can transmit continuously with no
pause and normalized throughput is 1.0
Case 2: W < 2a + 1


Sender A exhausts its window at t = W and
cannot send additional frames until t = 2a + 1.
Normalized throughput is W / (2a+1)
Error Control
 detection


lost frames
damaged frames
 common




and correction of errors such as:
techniques use:
error detection
positive acknowledgment
retransmission after timeout
negative acknowledgement & retransmission
Automatic Repeat Request
(ARQ)
 collective
name for such error control
mechanisms, including:
 stop and wait
 go back N
 selective reject (selective retransmission)
Stop and Wait

source transmits single frame
 wait for ACK
 if received frame damaged, discard it



transmitter has timeout
if no ACK within timeout, retransmit
if ACK damaged,transmitter will not recognize it



transmitter will retransmit
receive gets two copies of frame
use alternate numbering and ACK0 / ACK1
Stop and Wait
 see
example with both
types of errors
 pros and cons


simple
inefficient
Go Back N
 based
on sliding window
 if no error, ACK as usual
 use window to control number of
outstanding frames
 if error, reply with rejection


discard that frame and all future frames until
error frame received correctly
transmitter must go back and retransmit that
frame and all subsequent frames
Go Back N - Handling
 Damaged


error in frame i so receiver rejects frame i
transmitter retransmits frames from i
 Lost

Frame
Frame
frame i lost and either
• transmitter sends i+1 and receiver gets frame i+1
out of seq and rejects frame i
• or transmitter times out and send ACK with P bit
set which receiver responds to with ACK i

transmitter then retransmits frames from i
Go Back N - Handling

Damaged Acknowledgement





receiver gets frame i, sends ack (i+1) which is lost
acks are cumulative, so next ack (i+n) may arrive
before transmitter times out on frame i
if transmitter times out, it sends ack with P bit set
can be repeated a number of times before a reset
procedure is initiated
Damaged Rejection


reject for damaged frame is lost
handled as for lost frame when transmitter times out
Selective Reject








also called selective retransmission
only rejected frames are retransmitted
subsequent frames are accepted by the receiver
and buffered
minimizes retransmission
receiver must maintain large enough buffer
more complex logic in transmitter
hence less widely used
useful for satellite links with long propagation
delays
Go Back N
vs
Selective
Reject
Selective-reject ARQ

Window-size limitation

E.g. 3 bit sequence number, window size = 7

Station A sends frames 0 ~ 6 to station B

Station B receives all seven frames and
cumulatively acknowledges with RR7

If RR 7 is lost

A times out and retransmit frame 0 (w/o P-bit
timer? Can P-bit mechanism be used in SR-ARQ?)
Selective-reject ARQ (cont)

B has already advanced its receive window to
accept frames 7, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Thus, it
assumes that frame 7 has been lost and that
this is a new frame 0 which it accepts.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 ...
S
RR7 lost
retx
R

Selective-reject ARQ (cont)

Problem with the foregoing scenario


overlay between the sending and receiving
windows
Solution

for a k-bit sequence number, the maximum
window size is limited to 2k-1.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 ...
S
RR4 lost
retx
R
x
Performance of ARQ
 Appendix
7A

Stop-and-Wait ARQ   

Selective Reject ARQ  

Go-back-N ARQ 
High Level Data Link Control
(HDLC)
 an
important data link control protocol
 specified as ISO 33009, ISO 4335
 station types:



Primary - controls operation of link
Secondary - under control of primary station
Combined - issues commands and responses
 link


configurations
Unbalanced - 1 primary, multiple secondary
Balanced - 2 combined stations
HDLC Transfer Modes

Normal Response Mode (NRM)



Asynchronous Balanced Mode (ABM)


unbalanced config, primary initiates transfer
used on multi-drop lines, eg host + terminals
balanced config, either station initiates transmission,
has no polling overhead, widely used
Asynchronous Response Mode (ARM)

unbalanced config, secondary may initiate transmit
without permission from primary, rarely used
HDLC Frame Structure
 synchronous
transmission of frames
 single frame format used
Flag Fields and Bit Stuffing

delimit frame at both ends with 01111110 seq
 receiver hunts for flag sequence to synchronize
 bit stuffing used to avoid confusion with data
containing flag seq 01111110





0 inserted after every sequence of five 1s
if receiver detects five 1s it checks next bit
if next bit is 0, it is deleted (was stuffed bit)
if next bit is 1 and seventh bit is 0, accept as flag
if sixth and seventh bits 1, sender is indicating abort
Address Field

identifies secondary station that sent or will
receive frame
 usually 8 bits long
 may be extended to multiples of 7 bits


LSB indicates if is the last octet (1) or not (0)
all ones address 11111111 is broadcast
Control Field

different for different frame type

Information - data transmitted to user (next layer up)
• Flow and error control piggybacked on information frames



Supervisory - ARQ when piggyback not used
Unnumbered - supplementary link control
first 1-2 bits of control field identify frame type
Control Field

use of Poll/Final bit depends on context
 in command frame is P bit set to1 to solicit (poll)
response from peer
 in response frame is F bit set to 1 to indicate
response to soliciting command
 seq number usually 3 bits

can extend to 8 bits as shown below
Information & FCS Fields
 Information



in information and some unnumbered frames
must contain integral number of octets
variable length
 Frame


Field
Check Sequence Field (FCS)
used for error detection
either 16 bit CRC or 32 bit CRC
HDLC Operation
 consists
of exchange of information,
supervisory and unnumbered frames
 have three phases

initialization
• by either side, set mode & seq

data transfer
• with flow and error control
• using both I & S-frames (RR, RNR, REJ, SREJ)

disconnect
• when requested or fault noted
HDLC Operation Example
HDLC Operation Example
Summary
 introduced
need for data link protocols
 flow control
 error control
 HDLC